New Year New Career: Yogi investment banker thrives in small business

Published 4:34 pm, Thursday, January 19, 2017

Jen Russo the founder and chief executive officer of Juja Active stores, at her recently opened Greenwich store that specializes in curated activewear for girls and women at 160 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, Conn., Friday, Nov. 11, 2016. less

Jen Russo the founder and chief executive officer of Juja Active stores, at her recently opened Greenwich store that specializes in curated activewear for girls and women at 160 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, ... more

Jen Russo the founder and chief executive officer of Juja Active stores, in front of her recently opened Greenwich store that specializes in curated activewear for girls and women at 160 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, Conn., Friday, Nov. 11, 2016. less

Jen Russo the founder and chief executive officer of Juja Active stores, in front of her recently opened Greenwich store that specializes in curated activewear for girls and women at 160 Greenwich Ave., ... more

At left, Jen Russo the founder and chief executive officer of Juja Active stores, folds clothes with Juja's area manager Jessica Mendola at Russo's recently opened Greenwich store that specializes in curated ... more

A long career in investment banking turned out to be the perfect preparation for Jen Russo to found a new activewear company.

Russo, owner of JuJa Active, was intrigued while growing up by an investment banker who worked with her mother during the initial public offering of her software company. “Investment banking seemed really exciting, and I always loved math,” she said.

Russo majored in finance at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and set out on the career path that led her to senior finance positions at firms around New York, California and the U.K.

Her work with mergers and acquisitions as well as advising retail companies in trouble was “a tremendous learning experience,” she said. “I can’t think of a job where I would have learned more.”

From her finance career, Russo realized she’d developed a love for fashion and retail. And while she was on the road for work, she visited countless yoga studios that carried hard-to-find activewear brands.

“The timing was right in the activewear market,” Russo said. So in 2015 she dropped out of the corporate world and opened JuJa Active, a small business that curates all the brands she’d found in local studios.

Two years later and the same drive that fueled Russo in finance propelled her to open four stores, with ambitions to turn JuJa into a nationwide brand. JuJa’s most recent store on Greenwich Avenue is already more successful than she anticipated, Russo said.

But owning JuJa means more than selling cute clothes, she said.

“My brand is about empowering women,” she said. “When people come in here and get so excited about these clothes they’ve never seen before, it renews their commitment to live a healthier lifestyle.”

In addition, Russo reaches out to the communities where her stores are located to support yoga classes that benefit nonprofits, such as a domestic violence shelter in New York City.

Though Russo has left the competitive realm of investment banking, she emphasized her work has only grown more demanding. “I work all the time,” she said. “I tell people interested in opening their own businesses that you have to be really passionate about it, because it takes over your life. ... I don’t feel like I’ll ever be done. There’s so much opportunity.”